Yesterday was the last day of the fourth Bergman Week, the small and intimate festival, on the island of Fårö, co-arranged by Göteborg International Film Festival. Among this year’s guests were British actor and director Kenneth Branagh, Swedish Bergman actress Bibi Andersson and Swedish pianist Käbi Laretei. Branagh screened his film version of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and introduced his Bergman favourite Fanny and Alexander. – My friends sometimes ask me if I am influenced by t...
British actor and director Kenneth Branagh is this summer's guest at Bergman Week at Fårö, with his version of Mozart's The Magic Flute, which also Ingmar Bergman directed in 1975. Branagh, well-known for his Shakespeare interpretations on film and stage, premiered The Magic Flute at the Venice and Toronto festivals. For the Swedish premiere of the film, he has chosen Bergman Week at Fårö (June 26 - July 1). For the fourth consecutive year, Bergman Week arranges seminars, talks and guided to...
Thursday, February 15----While most Americans will spend Presidents' Day Monday either shopping, sleeping late or lounging at a pool, intrepid New Yorkers can bathe in the glorious spectacle of a silent film classic, with musical accompaniment, at the Jacob Burns Film Center.....Swedish director Victor Sjostrom's 1921 classic THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE. Sjostrom (later dubbed Victor Seastrom in Hollywood), who directed some early silent classics in both his native Sweden and eventually in Holl...
Thursday, January 11----2006 marked the final curtain for many film greats. But perhaps none of them was as influential, or as endearing to both professionals and the public, as the renowned Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Known as the “Master of Light”, Nykvist brought a shimmering yet subtle beauty to his filmed work, particularly his long and prolific collaboration with fellow Swedish film icon Ingmar Bergman....one of most glorious collaborations in film history. To salute the im...
The International Ingmar Bergman Debut Award is one that seeks to highlight new international filmmaking talents. The award will be presented for the first time at the Göteborg International Film Festival, which is to be held from January 26 – February 5, 2007. “The award is a way of encouraging young filmmakers to deal with really important issues at a time when the film industry has more and more assumed the shape and form of a butchery and fornication business!” says Ingmar Bergman. In...
During the 30th anniversary of the Göteborg International Film Festival the inaugurational Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award will be presented to “a director making his or her debut with a film dealing with, in a broad sense, issues displaying a dynamic or experimental consciousness of the cinematic means of expression”. The award consists of one weeks stay at the Bergman Week at Fårö during the summer of 2007, and a beautiful engraved stone from Ingmar Bergman’s own beach at Få...
The Stockholm International Film Festival now presents the names of the five people who will decide which of the films in the Stockholm XVII Competition gets the honorary Bronze Horse award. This year’s jury is an international mix consisting of two directors, an actress, a producer and an artist. The main task of the festival jury is to present the honorary Bronze Horse (at 16 lbs the world’s heaviest film award) to a film in the international competition section. The jury also gives out Al...
Tuesday, September 26---One of the iconic images in international cinema is the sight of the Grim Reaper, the devil who seperates the spirit from the body of men, playing a strategic game of chess with a Knight during the Black Plague in Ingmar Bergman's landmark 1957 film THE SEVENTH SEAL. A new 35mm film print of this venerable film classic will be screened as part of the 50 Years of Janus Films celebration at this year's New York Film Festival.
Legendary actor Max Von Sydow, one of the acto...
The legendary Swedish actor, Max von Sydow, had the chance to provide an overview of his long, illustrious career in film and theatre at the press conference that he gave before receiving the first of this year’s Donostia Awards yesterday. He admitted that it was “a great pleasure and honour to accept this award”, as he very much admired the great Spanish filmmakers. Several of the questions inevitable focused on his work with Ingmar Bergman and he acknowledged that he owed him tremendous ...
Tuesday 5 September, from 3.30 to 5.30 p.m.The European Films in the United States conference is scheduled for Tuesday 5 September, in the Conference Room (2nd floor, Palazzo del Casinò), from 3.30 to 5.30 p.m. Chaired by the initiative’s guardian, Peter Cowie, journalists Molly Haskell (New York Observer), Jonathan Rosenbaum (The Chicago Reader), Richard Corliss (Time Magazine), Nick Vivarelli (Variety), having first sketched out a brief history of European films in the United States, will d...
Multiple Academy Award winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) describes himself as ”a huge Bergman fan”. He will visit Fårö off the coast of Sweden on July 1-2 and introduce the screening of his film The Ice Storm and also talk about his favourite Bergman film, Wild Strawberries under the heading “My Flavour of Strawberries”.This year's "Bergman Week" presents a program filled with exciting guests representing three generations of filmmakers, a string of rarely seen Bergman film...
Multiple Academy Award winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) describes himself as ”a huge Bergman fan”. He will visit Fårö July 1-2 and introduce the screening of his film The Ice Storm and also talk about his favourite Bergman film, Wild Strawberries under the heading “My Flavour of Strawberries”. This year's Bergman Week presents a program filled with exciting guests representing three generations of filmmakers, a string of rarely seen Bergman films and excursions into the he...
This is a film made by a Swede - now how do you define that? By blood, by territory, by residency, by a hyphenated ethnic identity? Miko Lazic is actually a second generation Swede. He's a Serbian-Swede. His film ...
At a special gala ceremony at the Museum of World Culture, the Göteborg Film Festival Nordic Film Award went to the director Dagur Kári for Dark Horse (Voksne Mennesker), which, “with a young careless rebel in focus, with insight and humour unites fragments from an alienated society into an artistically challenging unity”. The award consists of 150 000 SEK and the Filmdraken (Film dragon)statuette."To be nominated for an award like this is like having a race horse", expressed a happy Dagur...
The winners of the Guldbagge - Gold Beetle awards were announced last night at a ceremony at the Göteborg Opera House. Feature film debutant Lena Einhorn won the highest award for Best Film - Nina's Journey, a survival story about her mother who lived in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII and traveled from Poland to Sweden. Einhorn who also took home the best screenplay award was chosen over the expected winners: Mouth to Mouth, Björn Runge and Zozo-Josef Fares.Best Picture Ninas resa / Nina’s ...
The Göteborg Film Festival, now in its 29th year will be held 26th January to 4th of February, becoming the Nordic film branch headquarters for ten days. The festival head is the esteemed film critic Jannike Åhlund who has been active for nearly three decades on the Swedish film scene and a member of the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes 2003. The festival is both a public forum as well as a branch meeting place with 450 features, shorts, and documentaries from 60 countries.George Clooney’s ...
A total of 87 filmmakers, actors and actresses from all over the world visited the Stockholm International Film Festival between November 17-27 a new festival record! The Stockholm XVI Competition has been unique, with filmmakers from fifteen out of eighteen competing films visiting Stockholm to attend the festival. Argentinean director Juan Solanas travelled to Stockholm to receive a Bronze Horse for best film for Nordeste. Chan-wook Park, winner of last year’s Star! Audience Award, handed o...
The Cannes Classic section of the 58th Cannes Film Festival, features the documentary trilogy: Ingmar Bergman Complete: Bergman And The Cinema / Bergman And The Theatre / Bergman And Fårö Island directed by Marie Nyreröd.The series screened on Swedish Television during the past year turned out to be one of the most popular programs of 2004. Nyreröd takes us back to the location where Bergman wrote his first screenplay in Filmstaden, (Film Town) outside of Stockholm. Bergman shows us the offi...
Ingmar Bergman is one of the world’s most acclaimed film directors. His latest film (he claims his last), SARABAND, starring two longtime Bergman collaborators, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in the United States on July 8, 2005In SARABAND, Marianne and Johan meet again after thirty years without contact, when Marianne suddenly feels a need to see her ex-husband again. She decides to visit Johan at his old summer house in the western province of ...
The 15th Stockholm International Film Festival announced the decisions of the Festival Jury in a special ceremony at the festival close on November 27th. For the first time ever for the festival, a female director received the prestigious Bronze Horse award. Female directors also for the first time were fifty percent in the official selection. The jury included Alexandra Dahlström, acclaimed actress of Lukas Moodysson's Fucking Åmål and Bruce LaBruce, Canadian cult film director whose film Ra...
The 6th edition of the Norrkoping Film Festival Flimmer in Sweden wrapped on sunday the 17th of October. The festival counted a recordbreaking 10 000 spectators, and packed Gala screenings of Walter Salles acclaimed THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, the Swedish premiere of french crowd pleaser CHORISTS and Sundance winner MARIA FULL OF GRACE.“The festival have during this year gained recognition from the swedish film industry and media, and has established itself as a well-organized and cutting edge fil...
Miramax co-chair Harvey Weinstein who was at the Berlinale for the opening film Cold Mountain said he was impressed by Swedish director Mikael Håfström, enjoyed the visual style in Evil and what the young director got out of his actors. He recently spent time speaking with Håfström while on a visit to Sweden to promote Cold Mountain. Evil is one of the nominated best foreign language films for an Academy Award. When Håfström is in Hollywood later this month he will be speaking with prod...
Andreas Wilson is Sweden's Shooting Star that participated in the "Shooting Star" Event at the Berlinale February 8th. He was born in 1981 and attended the Tibble Gymnasium, where he was trained in both acting and singing. Andreas began his professional career at a young age, having been cast in several productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm while still in school. On stage, he held the lead roles in several musicals, including West Side Story and Grease. In 2003, he made an auspi...
Miramax co-chair Harvey Weinstein who was at the Berlinale for the opening film Cold Mountain said he was impressed by Swedish director Mikael Håfström and liked the visual style in Evil and what he got out of his actors. He spent time speaking with Håfström while in Berlin. Evil is one of the nominated best foreign language films for an Academy Award. When Håfström is in Hollywood later this month he will be speaking with producers, in particular about a Miramax project called Derailed...
Swedish "Guldbagge" (Golden Beetle) Awards Evil directed by Mikael Håfström took home "Golden Beetles" for best Swedish film of 2003, best cinematography (Peter Mokrosinski) and best set design (Anna Asp) on January 26th.Set in the 1950's the film is about an exclusive school for young men run by bullies that subjugate their peers while teachers and staff look the other way. Erik (Andreas Wilson) stands up to his tormentors and earns the name 'Rat'.The film is an adaptation of the semi-biog...
